


The Fall of Every Sparrow

by NancyBrown



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Extra Treat, Gen, Supernatural Elements, ToT: Monster Mash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-27
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-23 21:49:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12517308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NancyBrown/pseuds/NancyBrown
Summary: Sam Vimes comes home and finds an unwelcome visitor at his house.





	The Fall of Every Sparrow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MiraMira](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MiraMira/gifts).



> Content warning in the end notes. Takes slight liberty with the timeline with regard to Young Sam's interests.

Vimes hadn't slept in longer than he liked to consider. There'd been the case of the Shades Flasher, and then that ex-Black Ribboner who'd fallen off the wagon so hard he'd bounced. Sally had taken a personal and direct interest in that one. Sam Vimes had a lot of difficulty setting aside his own issues but Commander Samuel Vimes knew she was the best copper for the job, and she'd brought him in. Well, most of him. Well, Carrot had been handy with the broom and dustpan. And after that had been settled, there'd been that bad business with the dwarf and troll gangs who hadn't got the memo that Koom Valley Day was permanently cancelled. He'd taken the Watchman's nap several times this week, open-eyed on his feet during the stakeouts Carrot had helpfully told him he didn't have to attend personally, but as they all knew, that wasn't sleeping, that was just dying slowly.

The point was, Sam Vimes was bone-tired when his captains and sergeants and really a lot of people who were supposed to follow his orders ganged up on him and played unfairly by asking Sybil to tell him to go home for a day and remind his eyes what the insides of his eyelids looked like.

Lack of sleep and a lifetime of working nights combined to make the last part of his walk home a surreal experience in late morning sunlight slanting through a persistent fog. Buildings loomed out at him, and there were no shadows. The tromp of his boots crunched with loud pops, the familiar feel of the gravel path telling him more than his mist-deceived eyes. He was home.

The other familiar sounds of home came to him: the dragons muttering in their pens, Willikins shouting at The Boy for something, and from the garden, the high squeal of Young Sam at play.

His boots knew better than Sam, and instantly set him on the path towards the back. Sybil had little use for the finer aspects of her ancestral home, giving over the grounds and the house to the pursuit of her scaly, belching, and oft-times exploding favorite hobby. But Young Sam was four years old, and he had an inquisitive mind that was best served by exploring the outdoors well away from young dragonets who responded to curious prodding in much the same way innocent enriched uranium atoms responded to being shoved together roughly. Thus, the long-neglected garden had been viciously cut back from its previous jungle-like outgrowth and into a more pleasant green space. Young Sam could poke and prod and dig and climb while his current nanny enjoyed her brief time outside the confinement of noise-amplifying walls.

Vimes heard another squeal, and this one sounded less happy. His boots moved faster, and his dad-sense flicked through the catalog of potential issues, from scraped knees to being told no, he could not have the sword over the fireplace to hack at the mysterious Howondaland jungle that he was pretending the shrubberies to be today.

He rounded the corner, and over the hedge, through the fading mists, he saw a tall, dark figure. Senses kicked in that had little to do with fatherhood and everything to do with seeing the worst of humanity, and dwarfdom and trollhood and don't ask him about that one time the elves broke through, on a nightly basis. He reached the opening to the hedges. The dark form resolved into something from his every nightmare: a black-robed figure, seven feet tall, leaning over a small boy beneath the tall climbing tree.

Vimes let out a hoarse cry that came all the way up from his feet. His hand was already on his sword, knowing he could do nothing and refusing to stop as he sped.

Death turned at his cry. Young Sam turned, perfect little face drawing into worry, not yet at the point of crying. Vimes ran faster.

He heard his son say, "It made a poo."

"ER, YES."

As the two moved aside, Vimes saw the smallest form at their feet. His momentum was too great, and the sword dropped from his hand as he scooped Young Sam up, pushing the air from his own lungs as he gathered up the confused and very much alive child into his arms.

Shielding Young Sam with his own body, he stared at Death. He would have liked to have said something defiant, but the wind was out of him now, and his panic-drenched body couldn't make more of a sound than, "You!"

Death nodded in acknowledgement. "ME."

"You. No. Can't." But his eyes had taken in the crumpled form at their feet, and even if most of his body was still in protector mode, the rest of his brain had already identified the poor dead baby bird, which looked as though it had fallen from a high branch of the tree beside them.

Death removed a velvet pouch from the depths of his robes. Ignoring Vimes, he unrolled it and Vimes could have sworn there were a selection of small scythes laid out on the midnight velvet. Death selected one from the middle, and he bent down. With a precise flick of his wrist, he severed something. A wisp, no different from the fog burning off over the city, emerged from the body, cheeped once mournfully in an echo of a real bird, and faded away. Well above them, another bird sang out a long mournful note before returning to tend to the rest of her clutch.

Vimes had the strange sense he was witness to something mortals weren't generally privy. He his son closer. "Why can I see you?"

"THE SAME REASONS YOU USUALLY DO. LACK OF SLEEP. STRESS." Death helpfully enumerated on his bony fingers. "PROXIMITY TO A NEAR-ME EXPERIENCE. CONSUMPTION OF AN HALLUCINOGEN."

"Are you a skeleton?" Young Sam asked.

Death sighed. "ANTHROPOMORPHIC PERSONIFICATION."

"What's that?"

Death looked at Vimes helplessly. "ASK YOUR PARENTS."

"How do you poo?"

It occurred to Vimes that Young Sam wasn't afraid of Death. "How can he see you? He's not stressed or tired or running for his life."

"YOUNG CHILDREN CAN SEE WHAT'S REALLY THERE. UNFORTUNATELY."

"Skeletons don't have bums. I saw one. If you don't have a bum, how can you make a poo?"

Vimes's heart had finally calmed from the race of horror into the post-adrenaline relief of the real world. The fog was lifting, and Young Sam was talking about poo. The world might not make sense, but it was the world he knew.

"I thought you'd come for him."

"I WILL COME FOR HIM. I COME FOR EVERYONE. BUT NOT TODAY."

"I'll fight you when you do."

"PEOPLE HAVE TRIED TO FIGHT ME BEFORE." For someone who, proverbially, had to be everywhere at once, Death seemed in no hurry to get to his next appointment. "NONE HAVE SUCCEEDED. BUT HAVING LONG BEEN AN OBSERVER OF YOURS, I HOPE THAT IT HELPS YOU TO KNOW THAT I THINK YOU WOULD HAVE PUT UP A GOOD SHOW BEFORE YOU LOST."

It did, a little. He gave the boy another hug, until Young Sam squirmed. Vimes set him down and said, "Go inside. Give your mummy a hug and tell her I'll be in shortly."

"Okay." He scampered off.

"I will do anything I can to keep you away from him. My child is the most precious thing in my life. I don't expect you to understand. I do expect you have other places to be."

For a moment, Sam saw deep into the dark eye sockets, where blue flames burned, and in the impossible gaze, he thought he read something that in anyone else, he'd call grief. Then the cool blue returned. "I DO."

Death did not vanish so much as become part of the vanishing fog, and what Vimes had thought was a seven foot tall berobed skeleton became the dark trunk of a tree. The limp body of a baby songbird lay under it. He heard Young Sam inside, his voice pealing with youth and wonder as he chattered at Sybil. The morning was heading towards noon, and the sun was growing bright. He needed to go inside and sleep for about two days.

But first he fetched a garden spade, and he buried the bird.

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: non-descriptive animal death.
> 
> For MiraMira with, as requested, no harm at all to Young Sam.


End file.
